Antipolo's Carolina Bamboo Garden launches an interactive bamboo museum, miniature bamboo organ

Antipolo City's Carolina Bamboo Garden just added a couple new attractions to its lush 5-hectare property: An interactive bamboo museum and a miniature bamboo organ.

On October 28, the bamboo sanctuary inaugurated the Bamboo Museum with Guest of Honor, Senator Cynthia Villar, leading the ribbon cutting, alongside the Bamboo Garden's owner and founder Carolina Gozon-Jimenez, her husband Nards Jimenez, and Antipolo City Councilor Edward O’Hara.  

According to Gozon-Jimenez, the Bamboo Museum is a “classroom [because] everywhere you go, you can learn something.” It currently has eye-catching displays on the historical and contemporary uses of bamboo – as weaponry, textile, design, and even as material for making bicycles and premium gin.  

The museum is also interactive, allowing guests to experience all of what the longest grass in the world can offer, a recent Balita Ko report said. 

Meanwhile Gozon-Jimenez said the miniature bamboo organ is inspired by historic and world-famous bamboo organ of Las Piñas. Built from scratch by Philippine Science Centrum engineer Jun Gando — who had no previous training in building one — the miniature bamboo organ features no metal parts and is all bamboo through and through.

At the launch, Gozon-Jimenez became the first person to play the miniature organ. She was accompanied by renowned vocalist Tricia Amper-Jimenez and Rafael Benjamin Tarriela on The Sound Of Music favorite, “Edelweiss.” 

Other musical performances during the launch include Kawayan Seven Modern Filipino Band led by World Bamboo Ambassador Atty. Dulce Blanca Punzalan, Dean Albert Roldan of the Charles Wesley School of Music at Wesleyan University-Philippines and violinist Isaac Roldan of the UP Symphony Orchestra, and The Care Philippines Rondalla. 

Carolina Bamboo Garden has become something of a sanctuary since it launched in May 2000. It boasts of more than 40 species of bamboo in its “bambusetum” or bamboo garden, features a unique bahay kubo designed by Architect Angel Lazaro Jr. that elegantly showcase the many uses of bamboo as building material for shelter, a treatment plant, and a butterfly garden.

It has since hosted many seminars and workshops about bamboo, allowing it to become one of the foremost centers for the research and development of bamboo, not just in the Philippines, but in Southeast Asia. — LA, GMA Integrated News

Carolina Bamboo Garden is located at Sitio Tanza II in Antipolo, Rizal.